Some kind of summer

I’m sitting in the morning June Gloom (hello, summer in LA) and thinking about everything this summer will bring. I took the boys for their first day of summer camp at the new rec center. I’m glad that field trips are back. In fact, everything is pretty normal except for the mask wearing. I hope this new camp has kids Bobby’s age and isn’t just all 5 and 6 year olds. I’ve been thinking lately that Bobby is going to age out of these cheap rec center camps really soon - if not by next year, then definitely by the year after. What do people do with their tween-aged kids in the summer? Apart from spending tens of thousands on expensive sleep away camps?? I’m not sure what my options are going forward. 

This weekend I threw away the piles and piles of schoolwork and schoolbooks the kids had brought home all week, after picking out a couple of interesting art projects to save. And that’s it, that’s the end of the year. I found out from a fellow parent that LAUSD plans to drop weekly testing but keep the stupid daily pass next year, which is the exact opposite of what I was hoping would happen. The weekly testing was a good gauge of what was happening in our home - after all, there’s no reason for me or the H to get PCR tests weekly. And the daily pass is like taking your shoes off at the airport - just safety theater that’s utterly meaningless and a pain in the ass for parents. It makes drop off more difficult - unless you want to use all your printer ink and paper printing out the slips every day for your kids to take in, you have to walk them in with the passes on your phone, which means everyone’s parking, which means there’s no parking. All of that for something that’s useless at best. Oy.

Now I’m just counting down to Big Thing #2 which is our honeymoon in Fiji in four weeks. Everyone needs to just not get covid in the two weeks before, and everything has to go right with my sister and brother-in-law arriving from Florida and us taking off, and we’ll be fine. Personally, despite the stress of everything hopefully falling into place and all the moving parts that have to work perfectly in concert, I’m very much looking forward to the break. The idea of a whole week with no kids, which means no having to arrange three meals a day, no haranguing people to brush teeth twice a day, no slathering unwilling people with sunscreen or forcing people to poop or having to be mindful of two other people’s water consumption or bed times or general safety…ahhhhhhhh. I get relaxed just thinking about it. To be responsible for only myself for a few days. What a luxury.

Speaking of think-for-yourself time, a friend has invited me on a walking tour of the Scottish Highlands next spring, and I’m into it. I’ve longed for a return of international travel, and since the concept of our band being flown to other countries (or even anywhere else in the US) seems like it may be gone for good at this point, I’ll just have to self-fund these trips. 

This week I have to start focusing on my event, a concept which fills me with dread. I’ve put off the big projects - class schedule, travel arrangements, booking hotel rooms - as long as I can, but I must dive into these things now. I need to get as much done as possible before we leave. Time to take a deep breath and dive in.